This book is written for software engineers, software project leaders, and software managers who would like to introduce a new advanced software technology, expert systems, into their product. Expert system technology brings into programming a new dimension in which "rule of thumb" or heuristic expert knowledge is encoded in the program. In contrast to conventional procedural languages {e. g. , Fortran or C}, expert systems employ high-level programming languages {Le. , expert system shells} that enable us to capture the judgmental knowledge of experts such as geologists, doctors, lawyers, bankers, or insurance underwriters. Past expert systems have been more successfully applied in the problem areas of analysis and synthesis where the boundary of lo;nowledge is well defined and where experts are available and can be identified. Early successful applications include diagnosis systems such as MYCIN, geological systems such as PROSPECTOR, or design/configu ration systems such as XC ON. These early expert systems were mainly applicable to scientific and engineering problems, which are not theoreti cally well understood in terms of decisionmaking processes by their experts and which therefore require judgmental assessment. The more recent expert systems are being applied to sophisticated synthesis problems that involve a large number of choices, such as how the elements are to be compared. These problems normally entailed a large search space and slower speed for the expert systems designed. Examples of these systems include factory scheduling applications such as ISIS, or legal reasoning applications such as TAXMAN.

Expert system technology is receiving increasing popularity and acceptance in the engineering community. This is due to the fact that there actually exists a close match between the capabilities of the current generation expert systems and the requirements of engineering practice. Prepared by a distinguished team of experts, this book provides a balanced state-of-the-art presentation of the design principles of engineering expert systems, and a representative picture of their capabilities to assist efficiently the design, diagnosis and operation of complex industrial plants. Among the application areas covered are the following: hardware synthesis, industrial plant layout design, fault diagnosis, process control, image analysis, computer communication, electric power systems, intelligent control, robotics, and manufacturing systems. The book is appropriate for the researcher and the professional. The researcher can save considerable time in searching the scattered technical information on engineering expert systems. The professional can have readily available a rich set of guidelines and techniques that are applicable to a wide class of engineering domains.

The first book to discuss efficient ways to implement the systems currently being developed--written by the co-author of Expert Systems: Artificial Intelligence in Business, generally regarded as the best non-technical guide to expert systems for business people. Gives innovative ideas for using expert systems to facilitate business operations. Appropriate as a text or supplement for data base, decision support, or special-topic courses that cover expert systems. Clearly explains new applications of automatic decision-making in management, sales, operations, programming, research, and service industries. Text supported by extensive examples and graphs.

Expert Systems are so far the most promising achievement of artificial intelligence research. Decision making, planning, design, control, supervision and diagnosis are areas where they are showing great potential. However, the establishment of expert system technology and its actual industrial impact are still limited by the lack of a sound, general and reliable design and construction methodology. This book has a dual purpose: to offer concrete guidelines and tools to the designers of expert systems, and to promote basic and applied research on methodologies and tools. It is a coordinated collection of papers from researchers in the USA and Europe, examining important and emerging topics, methodological advances and practical experience obtained in specific applications. Each paper includes a survey introduction, and a comprehensive bibliography is provided.